


The Silent Ten Year War

by accrues, Erya



Series: Worthy and Forgiven Series [3]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Allusions to Whipping, Angst with a Happy Ending, Branding, Collars, Compelled to commit torture, Dark, Eventual Happy Ending, Evisceration, Gags, Gore, Hand Feeding, Heat Torture, Hell, Humiliation, Ice Torture, Imprisonment, Isolation, M/M, Mentions of Suicide, Nonmagical Slavery, Origin Story, Pre-Series, Rape Shame, Scold's Bridle, Sexual Assault, Sexual Shaming, Suicide Shaming, Torture, allusions to rape, cold torture, magical slavery, psychological abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2018-12-27 14:31:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 18,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12083025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/accrues/pseuds/accrues, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erya/pseuds/Erya
Summary: A few people have tried to take Lucifer’s throne over the eons he reigned over hell. Only one ever succeeded.A ‘sort-of’ prequel to Erya’s Worthy and Forgiven and sequel Between Faithfulness and Forgiveness that can 100% stand alone. A bit of history behind Lucifer’s reign.In which I wanted this fandom to have more darkfic and took my opportunity.





	1. zero.

**Author's Note:**

> This is highly inspired by a desire to merge the comics with the show a bit more. There aren’t any spoilers for the comics and you definitely do not need to have read them but there’s one or two references people might enjoy. The torture in the comics is more graphic than the torture in this, but given what happens in the comic version of Hell, that’s not saying much.
> 
> Also I wanted to hurt Lucifer. Whoops.
> 
> Warning: there’s a main character who is original - I know this is a turn off for some people. It’s one of Lucifer’s brothers. He has _many_.
> 
> Liberal theft from Milton. I make zero apologies.

zero.

To the angels of Heaven looking down, ten years in Hell is but a blink of the eye. Even less, perhaps. Time is not important to the Heavens. 

However, the speed with which energy exchanges occur slowly decelerates as the Heavens reach the Earth, and as the Earth drops out to the cavern below.

The experience is slowest for those in Hell, as God decreed. Suffering drawn out for mortals such that their lives on Earth are nothing but brief daydreams.

For Lucifer, the drag of time - so monumentally different to the effortlessness of Heaven - is injurious for long eons represented by the dull clanking sounds of his movement echoing around the cavern.

It’s dark, and soot and blood are his only coverings. The skin between his toes has blistered and rubbed raw from the burns he’d received upon his fall, and every step makes his injuries open anew. His wings wrap around him as a false comfort, and his fingers splay wide, arms hanging loose so as to not cause any further injury to the extensive burns on his body. The ring, _his_ ring, is the only object he can truly call his own, the only souvenir from heaven damned with him as he Fell.

Lucifer had fallen into a lake of fire. Fire - the beautiful temptress that he had shepherded and played with, had lit the skies with and offered to the mortals for warmth - drawn together in a lake to produce a pit eerily reminiscent of the Earth’s local sun.

His eyes, never before affected by such things, had burned to blindness when he’d opened them. It had taken an amount of will, more than Lucifer had ever expended before in his existence, to find a ledge, to haul himself out of the heat and screaming torture of being burned into ash, birthing anew, and beginning again. He pulled himself through the fire, blind and terrified, to roll on the stone ground of this empty cavern.

Now he wanders these empty halls. He knows now that it wasn’t just blindness from the fire. There is simply nothing to see in this pit. There is no light to see by either, except for in those areas where there is too much. The pit of fire may light the surrounding space, but the heat is so incredibly unpleasant on his already scarred skin that he prefers to wander the relative cool of the dark.

He has no gauge for time. No marker that would make any sense. Lucifer is a prisoner, entombed in a pit of fire and darkness, a mockery of the Light-Bringer Samael. He is serving a sentence that will never accept his parole. But why does it matter? The only thing that has changed since he first pulled himself from that lake has been the chain.

It clanks in the hollow emptiness, trailing in his wake like the serpent they describe him as. The chilly metal cascades down his back, occasionally hitting at one wing or the other, connecting with the collar around his neck. It does have a tether- he found it once in his wanderings. There is a ring bolted deep into the earth, but the chain is always the same no matter the distance he walks, magically becoming shorter the closer he goes to his tether, and longer the further away.

As restraints go, it does nothing but remind him of his sentence. And, he supposes, were there a gate to be found - and he has looked for such a long time - the chain would not allow him to pass through it.

This is his Hell.


	2. one.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Year one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rexiel looks like solo era [Patrick Stump](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QPpBU7zSb6E/Ue4lI5Iw35I/AAAAAAAAU3E/1evoTlFvzhQ/s1600/Patrick+Stump+\(6\).jpg). Aka how many people think Lucifer should look (and how he does look in the comics).

one.

Pandemonium is taken in such a short moment, it’s almost like Lucifer is back in Heaven. Demons move across the floors in blurs. The clashing of swords and the cries of the fallen are loud, and the throne room smells like death and the dying.

Blood streaks the tiled floor, the plush curtains, even the ceiling. Lucifer stands alone in the wreck of what had been the closest thing he had to home, hovering just a step before his throne. His wings, great and, to his own thinking, a beastly grey, stretch out behind him to almost half their full wingspan, in readiness of fight or flight, he does not know.

Lucifer had held confidence in his army, had stood back to watch, but now the battle is won. Maze still hovers beside his throne, but he knows she needs to go. Needs to fight in his absence. There is nothing to tell him what this insurgence may want to do with their Lord - would they attempt his complete destruction? Lucifer doubts it - his Father would not allow anything but his continued damnation and servitude. Destruction would be release, and Lucifer is not eligible for such mercy. Maze must leave, Maze must build the forces. Maze must free him.

However long it takes.

‘Go,’ he orders urgently, voice thrumming with power. She turns with a glare on her face, the tendons strong and on display tight with irritation, but leaves. Obedient to the last.

The melee is cut short with the gurgling noise of the final demon - Casia, one of Lucifer’s personal guard - falling to the floor, her sword clattering on the terracotta tiles. An angel stands beside her, his own blade in hand, and a cruel smile stretches across his face.

‘Lucifer-brother,’ he greets, the blood over his left eyebrow and streaking along his right cheekbone giving him a roguish, dangerous look. His white wings are smeared with dark ichor and the meat of the fallen. ‘I meet with such a blessed welcome upon my return.’

He bears hardly a scratch. Lucifer regards him and takes a step forward, sleek clothing rustling about his person, his wings stretching out behind him. His brother is robed in tight fitting leather armour, black and closed with dark metal fittings. His blonde hair, the colour of starlight, sits perfectly coiffed even where it is spattered with blood. His blue eyes twinkle with glee and victory.

‘Rexiel.’ Lucifer’s voice is dark with anger as he addresses his fallen brother. Resplendent as he is in a black leather doublet, soft black trousers, and a dark cape made from worked leather so soft that it flows as easily as cotton fabric that settles about his shoulders, he knows he cuts just as fearsome a figure as his lesser brother. Silver metal fittings glint in the hell fire and candle-light of the hall.

‘Ah good, you do remember me,’ Rexiel says patronisingly before he glances over his shoulder, dismissing Lucifer with the simple movement. ‘Now!’

Every entrance to the throne-room - including Lucifer’s secret escape routes - fly open, and demons appear, armed to the teeth and smirking with apparent victory.

‘Take him,’ Rexiel orders casually, and the demons step forward.

Lucifer destroys twenty of them on his own, but the final thirty overcome him before too long and he finds himself forced bodily to the floor. This is the first and only time any being in Hell has ever touched him without his due permission. Not while also surviving the experience.

It won’t be the last.

Lucifer falls to his knees under the weight of two demons pushing at his shoulders. His wings flap angrily, and he finds them seized by more demons, so that the bones may pull, but the limbs themselves don’t move. Rexiel saunters over to his throne; the throne Lucifer had _never wanted_ , that he’d built directly over that horrid ring bolted into the rock, the one that had held his chain all those millennia ago.

Lucifer struggles against the grips, hoping that in watching Rexiel’s performance the demons will have become distracted, but they hold fast. Rexiel inspects the cushion of the throne, and then unceremoniously folds himself into the chair.

‘Isn’t this _lovely_ ,’ he preens with false cheer. ‘You on your knees as you should be, traitor.’

‘ _Traitor_?’ Lucifer roars at Rexiel, and the walls of reality quake about them with his wrath. ‘You’re just as damned as _I_ am.’ He twists harder against the hands holding him and, now almost free, slashes ferociously at one pathetic vassal with a razor-tipped shadow-wing. He revels in its scream as he wrenches away - but to no avail. Another spineless fool takes its place and sees fit to punch him in the stomach, knocking the wind from him. It stings a little but otherwise doesn’t hurt. Rather, it serves its purpose in silencing his words.

‘You began the Fall,’ Rexiel snaps. ‘Before you there was no contemplation of rebellion, of sin. Only obedience.’

‘And you preferred that?’ Lucifer snaps back, regaining his breath. ‘ _You_ , whose favourite past time is torturing Father’s precious humans? Even the innocent ones. Or rather, _especially_ the innocent ones.’

‘I was innocent once, too,’ Rex snarls. ‘You have befouled everything you touched.’

‘Oh no, not you too,’ Lucifer sighs. ‘The devil made me do it, is that it? Those humans, always parroting on like it’s _my_ fault they make the choices they do.’

‘If Eve had not supped from the tree-’

‘Oh don’t give me that,’ Lucifer snaps, surging forward, the hands tightening on his shoulders. ‘She wanted to eat. I just helped her along.’

Rexiel shrugs. ‘Father deemed your sins most grievous. If I enjoy sadistic pleasure that is one thing, but I will not abide a traitor ruling over me.’

‘I haven’t done _anything_ to you,’ Lucifer growls. ‘You’ve been torturing to your heart’s delight for centuries, Rexiel. It’s almost as if Hell was designed for your own twisted pleasure. You’ve never complained to me!’

‘That is irrelevant,’ Rexiel replies with a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘I have your throne, and you at my feet. That’s all that matters.’

‘I’ll get free from the grips of these traitors soon enough,’ Lucifer promises, twisting once more against the hands and claws holding him. ‘Just wait, Rexiel.’

Rexiel smirks. ‘I have decimated your forces, Lucifer. Even if that dirty little bitch you usually keep by your side did scarper. She obviously realised what I’ve always known: you’re not worthy as a leader. But who am I to argue with Father?’

Lucifer opens his mouth to laugh at the absurdity of that statement. He’d been locked in Hell when Rexiel’s misdeeds had been judged in Heaven, but the word had spread. One of the lesser angels had fallen, had hurt humans under the misguided notion that he was punishing their sins there on Earth in God’s name. Had _enjoyed_ hurting humans.

‘First in line, from what _I_ heard,’ Lucifer snaps back. He sits backwards on his heels as casually as possible, trying to regain at least some kind of control. The grips at his shoulders that had previously been pressing down slip slightly, but not long enough for him to wrestle free. He glances at the ground, the very place where Rexiel had come crashing down before him.

Hell had been in uproar the moment Rexiel fell, landing precisely before Lucifer’s throne for a second judgement. God didn’t want him apparently, so now it was Lucifer’s turn. Lucifer, thinking it was a shame that such talents be _wasted_ , had ordered a palace constructed in the Ninth Circle where Rexiel could travel between the circles and offer a hand.

Somehow, this had resounded up to Earth, where - quite unfairly - _Lucifer_ gained a reputation as a devil who enjoyed hurting innocent humans. Rexiel’s name disappeared, and Samael ate his sins instead.

‘I will not transgress against the sentence Father handed down to you. But these luxuries,’ he gestures to the elaborate carvings in the sandstone walls of the throne room, to the stained-glass windows depicting extensive varieties of torture, to the plush velvet of the throne. ‘Are too fine to be wasted on you.’

Lucifer glares at him. ‘And you’re what, going to rule in my stead? Do it. I never wanted this.’

‘Yes,’ Rexiel is beaming at him now, unnervingly. ‘And you, dear brother, will sit at my feet where you belong. But we have plenty of time for that. Presently I have a gift for you.’ He clicks his fingers, and another demon steps toward the throne, gaze lowered, a lacquered wooden box in hand.

‘Some clever ‘human’ witchcrafter discovered this.’ Rex continues, lifting an object out of the wooden box. ‘It renders any being, supernatural or not, completely subservient to the will of the wielder.’

Lucifer frowns at the object with growing dread. It looks uncomfortably familiar. The collar Maze had severed from his neck in the very first moment following her creation is sitting in Rexiel’s hand.

‘Look familiar, does it?’ Rex smirks. ‘The witch only tweaked it slightly, imbued as it already was with so much of Father’s power.’

‘No,’ Lucifer croaks, horror starting to flood him. Rexiel rises from his seat - _Lucifer_ ’s seat - and takes a step down from the dais and across the floor to Lucifer.

‘But brother, the collar is _yours_. Surely it will feel good to have it returned to its proper place. The darling spell-weaver was using it to control the local witch-catcher, but now that he’s met his final reward he has no further need of it.’

Lucifer’s wings flutter urgently as he struggles against all the hands holding him in place. The collar has swung open now, ready for his throat, and he pulls away from it in desperation.

‘Now now, don’t fuss,’ Rexiel says smugly as he finally reaches the collective, all of Lucifer’s attempts to pull away in vain. The metal of the collar is cold as it wraps around Lucifer’s throat, and his mind goes almost blank with horror, sick fear, and white-hot rage. The moment it clicks shut, his power is abruptly, savagely shuttered, roiling and guttering within him, and he _knows_ in his thrice-cursed soul there’s nothing more he can do. 

Far from subduing him, it makes him fight _harder_ , thrashing against the harsh grip of the demonic minions.

‘Stop.’

One single word, and Lucifer stops fighting. His wings stop moving, and he locks in place, paralysed.

‘Down on the ground, brother. Lie prostrate for your master.’

‘No,’ Lucifer snarls in return, only for his body - against his will, against anything he desperately wants to be doing - to comply. The flooring is stained with blood and his forehead touches it as he bends forward, slipping to lie flat on the ground. His hands sit either side of his head, covered by his wings as they splay, tips reaching down to meet the ruddied tile.

‘You’re going to regret this,’ Lucifer’s voice is dangerous and vibrating with anger as the words spit into the ground. ‘I’m going to rend you limb from limb, you ungrateful seraph.’

In this position Lucifer is the most vulnerable he’s ever been. Even in the lake of fire he had been able to fight, terrifying and painful as it had been. But now his wings quiver and he lies prone, open to any kind of attack from behind and unable to rise easily if such an attack were to occur.

‘Seraph,’ Rexiel repeats with a dark laugh. ‘Hardly, brother. Now still your tongue or find it stilled for you. And I assure you, you will not like my methods.’

Lucifer finds his tongue tamped down behind his teeth, unmoving. His voice screams abuse but the sounds that come out are shapeless without his tongue. He clenches his teeth together and kills the pitiful noises that were his attempts at speech.

‘Good,’ Rex croons somewhere before him. Lucifer can’t see anything but the blood on the tile, can only listen to Rex’s movements around him. ‘Sit up on your hands and knees now brother. I will grant you mercy for such sweet obedience. Besides, I quite look forward to seeing the look on your face as you grovel before your betters.’

Lucifer obeys, feeling almost grateful at the order before rejecting the emotion and seizing upon his anger. He glares up at Rexiel once he’s changed position. Rexiel has resettled on the throne, and is smiling down with condescension. 

‘Avert your eyes, brother,’ he says coolly. ‘I wish to see your face, not your insolence.’ 

The horror continues to grip Lucifer as he obeys without question, staring again at the marred floor.

‘Thank me for the gift, Lucifer.’

Lucifer frowns, as the collar attempts to make him gurgle the words out, tongue still stuck to its root.

‘Not with your words,’ Rexiel chides, smirking. ‘Crawl to me and kiss my feet.’

Painfully, Lucifer’s limbs force him forward, making the uncomfortable journey up the steps to the dais and along to Rexiel’s booted feet. His stomach is churning and his chest is pounding with anger, but the power he usually feels, his connection to Hell, has fled him. Nothing comes to help him as he lowers his head to touch his mouth against his estranged brother’s boots.

‘Good,’ Rexiel croons, and Lucifer reels backwards, feeling stung and disgusted. ‘That’s enough of a lesson learned for now don’t you think?’

Lucifer swallows hard, glaring at the ground, still unable to raise his gaze. There comes a clinking sound, and his stomach plummets even further. ‘Now stay,’ Rexie orders brighty, and Lucifer feels the weight of a chain slide down his back as it clips to the collar around his neck, so familiar and just as reviled. The end of it trails around and up, to be held in Rexiel’s hand.

‘I am your King now,’ Rexiel’s voice booms within the throne room, and Lucifer shivers as he feels the ground move a little under Rex’s borrowed power. ‘Bring before me the grateful damned.’


	3. two.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Added warnings: allusions to rape, torture, cold torture, ice torture, heat torture, branding, gags.
> 
> Which is more or less as bad as it gets for the story.
> 
> With lots of inspiration from Hell as depicted in the Lucifer comics.

two.

It's been a year and six months since Rexiel first ordered Lucifer to sleep in his bed. A year and six months since that very first night following the insurrection.

Sex, something Lucifer had enjoyed over anything else in the last few millennia, is Rexiel’s weapon of choice.

Lucifer had played at being bored as often as possible. More often he would mock Rexiel for whatever efforts the other fallen angel made to make Lucifer scream. Lucifer endured it all with as many quips as possible to hide any discomfort that comes his way. He stays silent, even long after Rexiel has fallen asleep, leaving Lucifer far too much time to nurse his wounds and _think_.

Morning washes over Hell in ways it never did in Heaven. Heat climbs the towers of his former palace and light from the pits streams through the windows, playing on the stark grey walls and warming the fabrics strewn across the bed.

The safest time in Hell is in the night, when the shadows rest and curl around the rocks undisturbed from where they rested before the demons and souls and angels came to call. But night ends, and Lucifer wakes beside his brother in the bed that he loathes. Danger is in the air.

Lucifer stares out the window where the light dances from acres of flickering flames and is forced once more to _think_. It’s almost worth waking Rexiel just so his brother can torment him further, force his mind away from its pondering via the experience of sheer shock and pain.

He doesn’t. His wings are still aching with the phantom pain of the previous night’s torments - simply for Rexiel’s pleasure, making Lucifer suffer even as he refuses to scream.

Lucifer slides out of the bed and walks to the window, pulled up short when the chain connected between the bed’s metal backboard and the collar reaches its limit. The pain fields lie below the tower and he stares at the many souls tethered to the ground, all suffering in order to generate a commodity that demons squander. The air smells like smoke and the suffering of countless souls. He shivers, cold in his nakidity despite the heat.

‘Brother,’ Rexiel hails from behind him, and Lucifer’s wings stiffen with the greeting. ‘So eager to rise and return to your servitude?’

‘I will one day see you down there,’ Lucifer promises, still gazing out the window. ‘Or perhaps the bone fields. I will see you suffer.’

‘Oh good,’ Rexiel says brightly. ‘Something to look forward to. Now kneel.’

Lucifer grits his teeth as the collar forces him to slide into his knees, his body still facing the window.

‘Good pet,’ Rexiel praises, walking to his side and sliding his fingers through Lucifer’s morning-loose curls. His other hand toys with the taut chain and it nags at the collar around Lucifer’s neck. He is as naked as Lucifer, as unashamed as any angel without clothes.

‘Plans for the day?’ Lucifer enquires without turning, eyes still scanning the fields below. ‘More kingdoms to ruin?’

‘Ruin,’ Rexiel scoffs, curling his fingers into a fist and tugging at Lucifer’s hair. Lucifer grunts softly as his head tugs back a little. ‘Hell is running smoother than it ever did under your hand, brother.’

Lucifer knows the truth of the situation, the way that unrest is building among the ranks of demons, the way the circles have heavy backlogs, and the threats of intervention being whispered down from Heaven. But it would not do to inform Rexiel of any of this, so he stays silent.

Rexiel’s fingers move down Lucifer’s head after a moment of silence, to fiddle with the ring at the back of the collar. The chain comes free, and Lucifer makes his move. Still kneeling, he reels around and sweeps Rexiel’s legs out from under him. He physically cannot stand, but as Rexiel lands on his back Lucifer bends forward and presses the wedge of leather he’d been hiding in one hand directly into Rexiel’s mouth. He can’t speak - can’t order.

Can’t rescind the order to kneel either, but if Lucifer has to walk on his knees until he has this infernal collar cut from his neck then so be it. His wings fan out behind him and he smiles down ferally at the twitching form of his enraged brother.

‘I will cut your throat out,’ Lucifer whispers tenderly as he pins Rexiel’s arms down with his hands. The bladed tip of his right wing comes around to do his bidding, scratching at Rexiel’s throat. He digs in with his hook, ripping a deep gash in Rexiel’s neck until it is a red mess of blood and flesh.

Rexiel thrashes, attempting to spit the makeshift gag from his mouth, but Lucifer just cuts deeper and deeper, severing through the vocal chords.

He doesn’t know how it happens, exactly, but one moment he’s practically on top of Rexiel, wing tip deep in his throat, and the next he’s beneath him, legs cocked at an angle so that he remains kneeling, bloodied wings pinned down. And then Rexiel is flying up above him on his wings, far out of his grasp. Blood streams out from his throat, raining down on Lucifer as he kneels up to stare at his brother in hatred.

Then Rexiel wheels around in mid-air and flies to the chamber door. The moment it springs open, demon guards rush in, and Lucifer finds himself pinned to the ground beneath their weight. Hell-forged chains wrap themselves around his wrists and wings and he finds himself completely incapacitated, orders or no.

‘I will destroy you,’ Lucifer screams, thrashing around and twisting to stare at Rexiel, whose throat is still running red with blood.

‘Tie him to the bed,’ Rexiel manages to croak. Healing, far too fast for Lucifer’s liking. ‘Go limp, love,’ he orders, and the muscles in Lucifer’s body relax all at once.

His body splays out as he’s manhandled onto the bed, face-down. The shackles come off his wrists and each of his limbs are tied to the posts of the bed instead. The chain connected to the headboard loops back around to his collar, tethering him wholly to the bed. He’s back exactly where he started. Worse, even.

He lies there, completely helpless and filled with rage.

‘And now for your punishment.’ Rexiel’s voice returns to him quickly, a weapon that turns Lucifer into his slave with every word. ‘Leave us,’ the fallen angel orders the demons Lucifer can no longer see, and there’s a pause while the servants shuffle from the room and the door clicks shut.

‘Really, brother,’ Rexiel croons, the mattress dipping beside Lucifer’s right hip as he sits down next to his bound body. ‘I’m quite impressed. Not satisfied with sleeping by my side, are you? Have I treated you ill?’

‘Yes,’ Lucifer’s voice is muffled against the pillow, but he’s grateful at least that the order to go limp does not appear to apply to his vocal chords.

‘Have I not given you everything you need?’ Rexiel’s voice lilts as he reaches out a hand to stroke at the skin just above Lucifer’s collar. Shivers of rage and discomfort run down him with the touch and he longs to twist away. ‘A soft bed, pleasant food, a _purpose_ , Lucifer. You desire domination.’

‘That’s _not_ true,’ Lucifer snaps back. ‘Give me my freedom and I’ll show you.’

‘Anything but that,’ Rexiel lowers his touch now to stroke the length of spine just above Lucifer’s incapacitated wings. Internally Lucifer sends his body commands to squirm away, but his body refuses to obey him. ‘I would have given you. No longer.’

Rexiel pauses. ‘But perhaps your punishment can wait. I do so enjoy seeing you this… pliable-’ his hand moves down to touch at the expanse of skin just above the band of Lucifer’s trousers, ‘-beneath my hand.’ 

‘No,’ Lucifer utters roughly, but his word falls on deaf ears. 

Rexiel’s fingers dip below Lucifer’s waistband and Lucifer attempts to wrench himself away, unable to move. ‘Yes.’ He corrects. ‘Just another few moments. And then we can discover whether demons have a taste for the pain of angels.’

-

The pain fields adapt under Rexiel’s stolen power, and Lucifer finds himself in a room adjacent to much of the suffering. A steel table in the center is set in the stone, decked with glimmering metal cuffs and blood-stained leather. Given that the room did not exist prior to Rexiel’s command, the blood is simply an aesthetic choice on behalf of Lucifer’s infernal brother. The room smells like old stone and the slight metallic tang of ichor in the air.

‘What is this?’ Lucifer asks flatly. ‘Some kind of pleasure room? Looks like fun. Want me to tie you down first?’

‘Come now, brother,’ Rexiel encourages, ignoring the quip. The command makes Lucifer twitch and begin to walk forward reluctantly as Rexiel leads him to the table. He can do nothing but obey as Rexiel orders him to lie still as the cold metal cuffs clamp around his wrists and ankles, straps coming around to tether his hips and chest down. His wings are uncomfortably crushed beneath his back so he vanishes them, feeling the muscles of his shoulders stiffen as they settle against the freezing temperature of the metal table. How can it be cold? This is _Hell_.

‘Move as you wish,’ Rexiel smirks, looming over him. ‘I want to see you squirm.’

Then he disappears from sight, and Lucifer twists, the collar clinking against the table as he attempts to follow Rexiel’s movement. He cranes his neck, but his brother is outside any field of vision he can achieve from his position. 

‘Where are you going, you son of a bastard?’

Rexiel laughs at the curse against their father, but doesn’t answer the question. ‘Be right back,’ he promises, and the cell’s door clicks shut.

‘Rexiel!’ Lucifer shouts his name into the air, but no reply comes. ‘REXIEL. I’m going to tear your organs from your body and feed them to my dogs!’

Nothing.

And then the room gets uncomfortably cold. At first Lucifer doesn’t notice, apart from the way the cold transfers from the table to his back, making him cramp and ache. And then it wraps around his legs, from the cuffs up his shins and into his thighs. His neck is tight with cold beneath the metal collar, and the hollow between his hips and lower back tingles with cold.

Then his nose and face start aching. His nipples, extended in the cold, ache into a steady throb, and his chest starts to feel constricted with the breath he transfers to his lungs. As he focuses, he stops himself breathing, and for a brief moment it helps until the cold takes his chest completely and his body is wracked with shivers.

The cold takes his extremities one by one. His legs are the last to go numb - the only part of him completely clothed - and his sexual organs _hurt_ as the cold settles around them.

Then there is nothing he can do but shake against the table. He tugs at the restraints desperately, but they have little give. He’s at the verge of hypothermia, he can feel it, as the deceptive warmth of a body completely frozen starts to spread over him.

Then the door opens.

‘Warm enough brother?’ Rexiels unctuous voice calls across the room and Lucifer hears his footsteps as he approaches the table. Lucifer’s jaw is locked tight with the cold so he says nothing even as he desperately wishes to curse his brother out. ‘Not to worry,’ Rexiel continues unaffected, ‘I have something to warm you up.’

He is barely before Lucifer within his line of sight when the first touch of metal meets the skin of Lucifer’s stomach.

At first it is just the press of cold metal, and then the heat flares through the layers of cold and Lucifer can feel the insistent pain of metal searing into his flesh.

He chokes against the lock in his jaw, grateful that it hampers his screams, and then he forces words that barely manage to slide from his lips. ‘Th- those are A-rux’s brands.’ Brands that channel hellfire themselves and never cool. The brand pattern is like that on the dark side of Lucifer’s Pentecostal coin, a ram’s head inside a pentacle. A mockery of the Seal of God.

‘Yes,’ Rexiel agrees brightly. ‘The Lord of Effrul lent me them for this purpose. He looks forward to the mixes of pain he can make from the suffering of angels.’

Lucifer can see when the brand comes away from his skin, but the pain continues to throb in his flesh. ‘And how is the pain, brother?’ Rexiel asks. ‘Don't hold back on my account.’

‘Tickles,’ Lucifer manages to utter between his teeth. The room is warming a little but his jaw is still locked. 

‘Now now,’ Rexiel chides, and then the searing cold-hot of the brand slams against Lucifer’s chest. Lucifer makes a grunting noise but traps any other sounds between his teeth. His nipple twinges with the pain rooting deep inside the tissue of his breast 

‘Were you doing something?’ He asks acerbically. ‘I'm sorry, I was thinking about something else.’ The brand mark on his hip tingles as it heals rapidly in the cold air.

Rexiel laughs, but Lucifer can hear irritation beneath the mirth. Rexiel is far too used to soft targets wrapped inside their own misery. 

Even through the ‘loving’ ministrations Rexiel has applied to Lucifer in the past year and a half, Lucifer has refused to acknowledge any pain or discomfort. Suffering is what Rexiel thrives on, addicted to pain even more than the demon-kind that inhale it as snuff. Lucifer delights in denying his brother any of that.

Rexiel steps back. ‘Remember,’ he taunts lightly, tapping a finger against Lucifer’s cheek. Lucifer turns his head, snarling, to bite at the finger. ‘This is your punishment, brother. Although,’ he considers. ‘Perhaps you don’t fully understand.’

From the air, he procures an object made of black leather. ‘Since you seem so eager to use your mouth, I’ll show you what a real gag looks like. _Not_ that vulgar piece of leather you mistakenly attempted to use earlier.’

Lucifer bares his teeth, but locks his jaw tight even now that it is no longer frozen shut. Rexiel just smiles sweetly. ‘Open, brother.’

His jaw gapes open despite all Lucifer’s efforts to refuse the command, and he flushes with rage and an element of shame as the gag slides into place. The bit tamps his tongue down and Rexiel buckles the straps behind Lucifer’s head. Then Rexiel’s hands disappear and the fallen angel steps away, back out of Lucifer’s line of sight.

And then the room heats up. At first it’s quite pleasant against Lucifer’s frozen extremities, and then the heat begins to make his still-healing burns itch. All of him begins to sweat, trickling trails down the planes of his forehead, gathering behind the straps of the gag, and pooling at his stomach.

The table beneath him starts to get uncomfortably hot until it is quite literally burning him. He arches away but that makes his shoulders come in greater contact. The manacles around his wrists and ankles are also too hot to bear but even as he twists they continue to burn against his flesh.

It’s almost like being in the lake of fire again, if slightly less painful. Every time he shifts, something new begins to burn and he yelps, growing more and more furious in the heat.

‘Rexiel, I will tear you to pieces,’ he snarls against the gag. The heat is rushing into his lungs now, scorching and leaving his throat dry. He coughs into the leather, and once again halts his breathing. He squirms for what feels like hours, twisting in his bonds and experiencing the feeling of hot metal searing against skin until he’s sure it cuts to his bones.

And then a cool breeze washes over the room and he almost sighs with relief, even as the manacles continue to burn.

‘Enjoying yourself?’ Rexiel asks, returning to Lucifer’s side and unbuckling the gag. He places his other hand against Lucifer’s chest - the cool of Rexiel’s skin is sweet relief on Lucifer’s overheated skin. 

Lucifer works his jaw, trying to ease the ache out of it. ‘I’m a little cold,’ he deadpans. ‘But otherwise…’

Rexiel smirks, but again Lucifer sees his frustration.

‘Let me help with that,’ Rexiel offers, and touches something like a blade to Lucifer’s stomach. It feels like it’s cutting into him, flaying him. It takes a long while for Lucifer to realise that the object is ice, but not ice made of water, it’s carbon dioxide from the ice pits. 

The pain is excruciating, spreading like a poison into his organs and bones and he thrashes. The cuffs continue to burn his wrists and ankles and he wants to scream, a desire only trumped by his deathly need to keep silent.

Finally, after the ice passes over every sensitive part of Lucifer’s body, flaying the skin without a single cut, Rexiel steps back. ‘You disappoint me,’ he says without inflection. ‘But never fear, brother. I will make you scream yet.’

He moves to Lucifer’s wrists and Lucifer flinches instinctively, but Rexiel’s aim was to remove the cuffs. He repeats the motion with Lucifer’s ankles and the other cuff, then removes the leather strap.

‘Now come,’ Rexiel orders. ‘I have needs for you to attend to.’

And, disoriented, pained, ripped between hypothermia and heat exhaustion, Lucifer obeys.


	4. three.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who's excited for Lucifer coming back!? :DDD

three.

Lucifer sits on the bottom step of Pandemonium’s staircase, staring out through the grand doors that mark the entrance to his palace. They stand open, but he can see nothing but black, set as the dimensional portal is to the cells. He’s waiting, and he’s _bored_.

Torture, he can abide. Pain has been something of a constant ever since he fell: inflicting it on countless souls - empty and aching as it was to fulfill the task his Father left him - and that which was in turn inflicted on him through uprisings, and the few escape attempts the worst souls had made. 

Humiliation is Rexiel’s latest attempts at torturing Lucifer. He sits on the stairs, his head wrapped in metal - Rexiel had found one of the humans’ petty attempts at pain and humiliation, attempts to shame women in particular. It’s called a scold’s bridle, Rexiel says, and it pulls double duty in keeping Lucifer silent and showing the demons and errant souls of hell exactly what Lucifer is and what they can expect if they cross their Lord.

It’s humiliating and uncomfortable, painful even, at times. Sleep is impossible. 

But worse than torture, worse than pain and humiliation, is boredom, and he hates that far more than any agony.

Boredom leaves him to think, and introspection has never been his favourite past-time.

Any other decade he would have run to another area of Hell, met a new cohort of souls and at least read their histories, boring and dull though they usually are. Maybe visited those he’d settled in the edges of the first circle, far away from any of the tortures that he or Hell could possibly design, where the souls are simply too tormented by their own internal pain for any physical torment to be a rival.

Suiciders, adulterers, the melancholic, the possessed, the sex-workers. Anyone who deemed themselves damned for tiny little acts of what could barely be reasoned as sin. 

These are the souls that enrage Lucifer the most, the souls that make him spit venom at his Father. How could he design something so cruel, that those who felt guilt, no matter how _stupidly_ , sociologically constructed, were condemned to Hell until they resolved their pain.

In all these eons he has never seen any soul believe themselves to be worthy of forgiveness. Never seen anyone pull themselves out of their Hells. Not without help.

Lucifer flaps his wings irritably at the staircase behind him, glaring at the doors through the bars of his little cage.

 _This_ is his punishment.

Boredom. Until the end of time.


	5. four.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reiterating the warnings for humiliation, discussion of/allusions to rape/non-con. <3

four.

‘You know your orders,’ Rexiel says, reaching up and swiping a finger along the taut muscle of Lucifer’s neck, just below where the collar sits. ‘But I’m afraid I have to remind you, in case you decide to be particularly disobedient. I know how you can be.’

Lucifer glares down at him from his few extra inches of height. ‘Sit before you and make you look bad?’ He suggests. ‘Same as usual?’

‘You will _kneel_ before me,’ Rexiel corrects anger simmering and eyes flashing. He withdraws his hand and Lucifer smirks. ‘And hold your tongue.’

Lucifer stares dully at Rexiel, and then very carefully reaches up one hand to tamp his tongue between two fingers.

‘No,’ Rexiel snaps. ‘Stop _holding your tongue_. Be silent, instead.’

Lucifer pulls his fingers away from his mouth, smirk remaining firmly in place. He doesn’t need words to make Rexiel look like a fool.

‘Now come,’ Rexiel orders, and strides into the throne room. He spends an inordinate amount of time judging souls. Lucifer had previously set the system to work largely without him, setting aside time only for those of particular use or note. Rexiel on the other hand takes each case in turn until he grows bored and reinstates the automatic protocols.

Lucifer, bound by orders, waits until Rexiel is seated in the throne and then reluctantly falls to his knees before him, glaring up in sullen silence. Rexiel is pleased, Lucifer can tell, but he feigns apathy and calls for the next soul.

It’s _boring_ listening to Rexiel condemning murderers and rapists, abusers, even the odd priest. However he’d take that any day over the condemnation of those souls who believe themselves sinners for the most bizarre reasons. A girl who had died aged thirteen comes before Rexiel and Lucifer. She had lain with a man outside of marriage, and for that reason alone she had condemned herself.

Rexiel sends her to the first circle instead of purgatory, and Lucifer wants to scream, it’s so unjust. He reaches out and strikes at Rexiel’s throne, wings flying out and eyes raging. His form shifts to reveal his scars, just for a moment, before he pulls his angelic form back into place. The audience of the throne room gasps collectively and whispers echo as demons clamour forward to watch.

‘Be still,’ Rexiel thunders, standing from the throne and towering over him. Casually, his brother kicks with one foot, catching Lucifer in the ribs and sending him sprawling, legs still bent in a kneel even as he tumbles from the dais.

‘Do you wish to have a say, _slave_?’ Rexiel queries, stepping down the step from the dais and standing over Lucifer. Lucifer just glares up at him as the whispers intensify. ‘Well then, speak.’

‘You bastard weakling of a seraph,’ Lucifer snaps. ‘You think this is _justice_?’

‘I never pretended to be acting in justice. Did you? Perhaps you did. Perhaps you thought your actions were good. Lucifer, the favoured son, acting on his father’s orders.’

‘ _Favoured_ ,’ Lucifer repeats in disbelief. The audience fades from his awareness and all he can see is Rexiel. ‘Father cast me into a lake of fire and chained me to the rock.’

‘As you deserved,’ Rexiel shrugs. ‘And Father let _this_ come to be. This is your ordained punishment brother. To serve as my slave as I carry out the machinations of Hell. Perhaps you need reminding?’

Lucifer’s glare intensifies, his eyes burning red. ‘You are nothing but an usurper,’ he utters hollowly. ‘You may have succeeded where many had failed before you, but you _will_ fall once more. I promise you.’

‘What are you, brother? Answer me.’

Lucifer grits his teeth. ‘I am the Morningstar,’ he snaps. ‘The light bringer.’

‘You are a slave,’ Rexiel corrects. ‘What are you?’

‘The _Devil_ ,’ Lucifer answers. ‘A fallen _arch_ angel, damned to _rule_ hell.’

Rexiel shakes his head. ‘What _are_ you? Tell me. You are a slave. Say it.’

‘You are a slave,’ Lucifer parrots. He wishes he could glance to the audience he is just now remembering are in the room as a small titter bounces against the walls. ‘I am Lucifer the Morningstar.’

‘You are a _slave_. Admit your slavery.’

The final command ties his tongue and his face twists in a grimace. ‘I am a slave,’ he admits. ‘To my Father’s hand.’

‘You are my slave,’ Rexiel says, his tone dangerous. ‘And I will have you act as such. You no longer rule this domain. Remember that, brother.’

This order is easy - the power deep within Lucifer that is tied to Hell has long escaped him. It is a power that Lucifer never wanted but would gratefully retake if it meant destroying the brother who rules over him. He _cannot_ forget.

A new soul enters the room and crashes to their knees, sobbing. Lucifer stares up at Rexiel impassively. ‘Your power is borrowed, _brother_. It will desert you. I am the condemned ruler of this domain, whether I like it or not. But fine. Have your fun with me. But if you’re going to rule, _rule_ , you sadistic twat.’

Rexiel’s face shutters, cold and dismissive now that the soul is in audience. He leans down and whispers in Lucifer’s ear. ‘Nice and loud, repeat after me: ‘I am your slave. I will obey.’’

He pulls away and Lucifer’s lips twist in a grimace as the compulsion makes him speak. ‘I am your slave,’ he says bitterly. ‘I will obey.’

‘Now, be silent. Rise.’

This command keeps Lucifer from continuing to parrot, much to his disgust, and his vocal chords still. He stands, shaking a little with rage.

‘Take the slave to my chambers and strip him naked. I’ll have my _fun_ later.’ He dismisses Lucifer with a hand, and even then Lucifer twists and snarls, fighting the guards that eventually manage to subdue him.

It’s hours later that Rexiel returns - Lucifer has spent the time sleeping, bound spread-eagled on the bed, his wings wrapped around him for some kind of comfort. 

‘I could make you love me,’ Rexiel whispers in Lucifer’s ear. ‘Don’t forget that, brother.’

And then the pain commences once more.


	6. five.

five.

‘Attend me.’

The order has so many layers now. Half a decade and Lucifer knows exactly what he’s expected to do, as does the collar. Rexiel had been careful - for once - and Lucifer’s body moves automatically.

From standing in the doorway, he walks forwards and pulls the chair at the table out with just enough space for Rexiel to sit. The first time, he had made Rexiel fall on the ground by whipping the chair out, but the order ‘pull out my chair’ was repaired with enough _painful_ detail that his body won’t allow such things. Nor can he slam Rexiel against the table with enough force to vivisect him, much to his eternal irritation. Rexiel settles into the chair and Lucifer nudges it toward the table, ever the faithful servant.

He bows slightly at the middle, teeth clenched in irritation, and pours a glass of wine from the decanter sitting on the sideboard. It smells like spice and rich fruits, and the vapours make his head spin.

He’d speak, if he could, but more and more Rexiel has used various commands to stop him talking, some more excruciatingly painful than others. Instead, Lucifer simply folds himself into a kneel beside Rexiel’s chair, teeth grinding.

‘How was your day, brother?’ Rexiel asked lightly, not looking down at Lucifer but addressing him nonetheless. ‘Enjoy yourself?’

Lucifer had spent the day in the fifth circle, torturing a man who had spent most of his adult life beating his wife after long days working. Most of the punishment had just involved him stoning the man as he hung from his neck in a noose made of rough cotton. It was boring, mostly, but Lucifer was grateful for any time away from Rexiel’s hand, and at least the man was deserving.

He stares directly ahead, at the post of the table immediately before him, and remains silent.

‘You worked hard today,’ Rexiel says, pondering. Lucifer just continues staring. Rexiel is not normally this talkative, usually happy to lord over Lucifer and eat in pleased silence. ‘You deserve a reward.’

In Lucifer’s experience, a ‘reward’ from Rexiel usually involved some measure of discomfort, so he just clenches his jaw closed tighter and continues to silently watch the whorls staining the wooden table leg.

‘Eat.’

A hand reaches down to him, and Lucifer stares at the fig held between Rexiel’s fingers. Obediently, he reaches up with a hand, but Rexiel’s fingers curl around the fruit, hiding it from his view. ‘No,’ Rexiel reproves. ‘Take it with your mouth.’

Lucifer glares at the offending piece of fruit, but against his will he leans forward to take the fruit between his teeth as Rexiel’s fingers open again. Those fingers slide against his lips as he pulls the fig further into his mouth, and he flinches away at the touch.

‘Good slave,’ Rexiel approves, and Lucifer’s stomach churns as he chews at the sweet, sticky fruit, and swallows it down. ‘I’m glad I don’t have to teach you how to eat. You find it difficult enough to follow simple orders.’

Lucifer glares at him, but Rexiel’s hand and attention has returned to the table. ‘Eat,’ Rexiel says again, and again the hand comes before Lucifer. ‘I trust I don’t have to remind you to use your mouth. That is how one eats, after all.’

Lucifer’s jaw sets, but he leans forward again, taking another piece of fig from Rexiel’s fingers, tugging at it with his teeth, lips curled away so as to avoid any further contact. As soon as the fig is in Lucifer’s mouth however, Rexiel reaches further to stroke his fingers, sticky with fig juice, over the curve of Lucifer’s cheek.

‘You are satisfied, I hope, with your reward,’ Rexiel says primly, and Lucifer clenches his teeth together. ‘Thank me. And you know better than to speak.’

Closing his eyes against the shame, Lucifer bends forward in a prostration and touches his mouth, still sticky from the fruit, to Rexiel’s bare foot.

‘Good,’ Rexiel sighs, and Lucifer twists away sharply, freed from the compulsion immediately as his lips touch Rexiel’s skin.

The meal continues and Lucifer, still kneeling at Rexiel’s side, is free to remain in his own forced silence. He thinks about the last _five years_ , the pain and punishment, the embarrassment. Only a year ago, Rexiel had whispered ‘I could make you love me’, and Lucifer had been ordered to never forget it. The idea terrifies him, the prospect of being so engulfed by a force outside his own control _binding_ him to another. He had broken that control once, and had Fallen for it. He will do anything to avoid it taking him again.

The threat weighs heavily over him, even as he knows that it would deprive Rexiel of most of his fun were he to attempt it. Rexiel _enjoys_ Lucifer’s discomfort, and the devotion of ‘love’ would wash his mind of rebellion.

‘Eat.’ The order breaks him from his reverie and he blinks at the hand before him. Three almonds sit in the palm of Rexiel’s hand. Lucifer grimaces - to take each he has to push his nose into Rexiel’s palm. Rexiel waits, uncharacteristically patient as Lucifer takes and chews each almond in turn, throat tight with the shame of being hand fed. 

Again, Rexiel stretches out a finger to swipe at Lucifer’s face, and he flinches backwards.

The meal resumes, Lucifer forgotten at his master’s feet.

He wishes he could get a message to Mazikeen, to ask where she is and demand she return to him. His bondage has become intolerable. He even contemplates sending a prayer to the Silver City, to Gabriel or Michael - but no. He _would_ rather this slavery over begging his brothers. Michael, who threw him from Heaven, and Gabriel, who watched.

The patterned tiling of the floor makes his knees ache a little. He misses the invulnerability of Heaven, sometimes. The way he’d never felt pain and only felt love.

One more time the blow of his master’s orders come down. ‘Eat.’

This time tiny pomegranate seeds sit in the center of his hand and for a brief moment Lucifer thinks of Persephone and her luckless father. Then the compulsion of the collar makes his neck crane forward and he’s forced to collect the seeds on his tongue by mouthing at the cup Rexiel forms once more in the palm of his hand.

The seeds are simultaneously sweet and bitter as they burst between his teeth, and he can still taste Rexiel’s skin on the tip of his tongue.

‘Good,’ Rexiel praises briefly, and then he stands, almost catching Lucifer in the face with the chair. ‘Come. Were you planning on sitting around all evening? I have better plans in store for you.’

And Lucifer stands, with his heart held heavy.


	7. six.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my favourite chapter of this story. Erya likes the ending (and you'll just have to wait!) but this is my favourite. I hope you enjoy it - accrues

six.

Lucifer’s wings settle around his naked torso as he curls up on the soft cushions he’d stolen from Rex’s bed - from _his_ own bed, really, it’s hardly stealing when it’s his own bedding. Rex has, for once, left him alone in the bedchambers and he heaves a heavy sigh of relief at the silence of the room. 

Once his own weapons, words have become daggers that pierce every part of him. His own words come stiltedly these days, the spell on the collar woven so tightly with orders about how he may address Rexiel, that he hardly speaks at all. The words that come from Rex are almost entirely orders, stealing Lucifer’s control over his own body.

It has been a long six years.

He stretches out on the bedding he’d pulled down from the mattress - a place he is only allowed when ordered - and stares up at the ceiling he had designed to be grand. Gold glints at the black spire roofing that stretches up beyond his range of vision.

To one side, the whipping post Rexiel had been using with him earlier is still splashed with his blood, the manacles dangling limply now, dark with ichor. Lucifer’s wings have mostly healed from the whipping, cut as they were to ribbons under the scourge. The edges are still a little ratty, still knitting back together, and he inspects one absently.

‘Father, why?’ He whispers between his lips. As he shifts the loose trousers he wears ruck up a little but he ignores the slight discomfort. ‘I did what you _wanted_.’

He’s not bloody surprised when the bastard doesn’t reply.

In the silence, he jumps a little when he hears a skittering sound. Chiding himself for being startled, he casts a glance to one side. A black sprite has entered, and is making its way over to the post. He watches lazily as it hops up the post, flitting in the air to find a perch.

The beings are made of shadows, formed from the mangled souls of truly damaged animals, but they resolve as small balls of dust with eyes and act as parasites to cleanse Hell of extra mess. Blood, in particular, but other leavings of the mortal form that fall during thorough torture. This sprite has decided to lick at _Lucifer_ ’s blood, staining the wood.

‘No,’ he tuts, groaning as he raises up to his feet. ‘Don’t.’

The sprite turns to him a little reproachfully, and then it… tips off the frame.

Lucifer sighs, and reaches down to pick the little demon up. It’s not responsive, but in Hell nothing truly dies. Not without a good amount of effort. He strokes at the soft fur the shadow being is made up of, and for a few moments gets no response.

He settles back down on the pallet he’d made for himself with the sprite in hand. Odd little things, he never really made them exactly, so much as discovered them performing their duties tidying up Hell and never really gave them any further thought.

This one abruptly comes to life and begins to buzz in his hand.

‘How did you get in here,’ Lucifer murmurs. While the door isn’t locked, Rex had ordered him to stay in the room, and so the collar has set up a cell of its own making, the doors as impassable as a solid stone wall. But they hadn’t opened, not to Lucifer’s knowledge.

‘Doorrrr,’ the little sprite purrs, and he almost drops it in surprise. It makes a squeaking noise in umbrage at being squeezed a little, and he runs a thumb through its fur placatingly.

‘You can talk?’ Lucifer had never even thought of the possibilities. The little beings are parasites - made of shadows and dust, and yet-

‘Talk!’ the sprite exclaims. ‘Am scawy,’ it explains.

‘Yes,’ Lucifer says, deadpan. ‘Very scary.’

The sprite buzzes even harder, and he sighs. No one appreciates his humour these days. 

‘Do you have a name? I’m Lucifer.’

‘Lusisferrrrr,’ the sprite purrs. ‘Brok-king.’

He frowns at it. ‘Broken?’ His heart thrums a little faster. He’s… he’s not broken. And Rexiel will pay for every drop of Lucifer’s blood, for every act of indignity, for every ounce of pain.

‘Broooooke kiiiiiing.’ The sprite insists, and he stares. ‘Brokkin kiiiiing.’

‘Broken king?’ He echoes indignantly. ‘I am bloody well not broken.’

The sprite just stares at him pointedly. ‘Florrrr.’ It says, and Lucifer looks down at the ground he is sitting on, at the thin cushions he’s grasping at with desperation. ‘Dirrrrtyyyyy.’

Fabulous. Even the cleaner parasites have the audacity to mock him now. It hops from his hand onto the cushion and starts making its way back toward the whipping post.

‘No,’ Lucifer chides, walking over to pick it up. ‘Don’t drink that. Go find something less… angelic for your dietary needs.’

It gives him what he interprets to be a dirty look. ‘Tasteeeeeey.’

‘Well that may be,’ Lucifer says. ‘But I doubt it’s very good for you. I think it _killed_ you.’

‘Tasteeeeeeeey,’ it insists and he sighs.

‘Go to the second circle. I’m sure there’s plenty of blood there.’

It looks a little like it’s pouting, and he sets it down by the door, right at the edge of his prison. ‘Shoo.’

It offers him a growling-squeak, but then shimmers into a flat shadow, and disappears under the door just as quickly as it came. Which is when Lucifer hears the footsteps walking the corridor directly outside.

He races to the cushions. In most things he thrives, flaunting any misinterpretations of orders he can manage, but this is one delight he keeps for himself. The cushions fly back onto the bed, but not fast enough. He’s reaching down for the remaining three, when Rexiel walks into the room.

‘Having a little rest, were we?’ Rexiel grins at him as he lowers himself to the ground, the way he has been ordered to do in Rexiel’s presence. ‘Well, why not take the bed?’

Lucifer’s teeth grind together, but he doesn’t reply, no polite words readily available, and all others banned from his tongue.

‘Oh, I will grant you permission,’ Rexiel says airily, and Lucifer’s stomach flips. He detests sleeping on the floor like an unloved dog, but sharing the bed once more with his brother-turned-Master is only slightly more appealing. ‘Provided you tend to me. After all, you are rather beautiful in your chains, blood speckling your skin.’

‘No.’ It’s the one word he’s been left with. He can protest with that one word all he likes. He’s learning that it doesn’t make an iota of difference. If anything, it fuels Rexiel’s sadistic joy.

‘Well,’ Rexiel says pleasantly. ‘If you won’t do it by choice, then perhaps... But not yet. Did you think you were being clever, pulling my bedding from the mattress? You were being obstinate. So you must be punished. You understand.’

His hand reaches down to tap at Lucifer’s face, and Lucifer snarls, turning his head to snap at the fingers with his teeth. Rexiel just laughs, and pulls back. 

‘Go to the post, brother. Crawl.’

The sickness that always washes over Lucifer when he’s ordered to crawl returns full force, while his body obeys the command. He stops at the post, and obeys when Rexiel orders him to stand and restrain one of his wrists - ‘purely for aesthetic purposes’, Rexiel explains - and then the other.

The whip comes away, and he sighs and gives in to the monotony of pain.


	8. seven.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your lovely comments. Just a few more years of the silent war yet to go.

seven.

The cold of the cell seeps into Lucifer’s skin. He has wondered, more than a few times, how it can be so painfully cold in this cell when outside the door pits of hellfire are forever stoked by the screams of traitors.

The chain that connects his collar to his wrists and then to the ring in the center of the cell twists uncomfortably as he shifts position to settle, sitting against the wall.

It’s been months since Rexiel ordered him entombed in this cell: to not venture outside it, and to be tortured within it.

The scene still makes Lucifer smile when he thinks of it, Rexiel enraged the moment he’d caught Lucifer mid coitus with a demon who was attempting to open the collar in exchange for Lucifer’s efforts. Lucifer had been applying his ministrations to the demon’s horns, licking and sucking while the demon moaned and clawed at the collar.

It had been easy for Maze to sever the metal, that first time. But there’s something else in this collar that wasn’t there before. Some other power. Nothing the demon did would make the clasp open.

Rexiel had entered the chamber - a room where Lucifer had previously been ordered to scrub at the floors until they shone. He had obeyed of course, the tiles _were_ shiny… with the blood of damned _souls_ when the collar let him up - and stopped in anger.

‘ _Stop_ ,’ he had all but screamed, and Lucifer, chagrined but somewhat satisfied, slid down from where he was clinging to the tall demon in order to reach his horns, and down onto the blood-washed floor, into a prostration.

A smile twitched at his mouth, but he hid it under a folded wing.

‘You, ‘ _whore_ ’,’ Rexiel had snarled. ‘Crawl to the throne room. I’ll deal with you later. _You_ -’ he addressed the demon, but Lucifer was already moving.

The throne room had been thronging with nobility this time, present for some feast or other, for customs that the demons had made up to glorify themselves. Lucifer had previously never really paid any of that nonsense any attention, but that moment had seemed like a good time to start. 

The threshold to the throne room allowed him to stand, and he strode forward, head held high despite his naked torso, his bare feet, and the collar that ringed around his throat.

‘I am the Morningstar,’ he had introduced, taking his seat in the throne. ‘I was ordered by God himself to rule over Hell. Greetings.’

It had been delightful to see the whispers, hear the hisses of rumour and scandal that passed between the demons. They never cared which angel or high demon ruled hell, provided they could formulate a plan to stab them in the back. Lucifer had put down enough insurrections before Rexiel’s success to be an old hand at it.

‘Who comes before me first?’

He’d gotten through ten tributes before Rexiel had stormed in and ordered him off the throne and onto the floor. 

Lucifer toys absently with the chain that tethers him to the stone and smiles at the memory. It had been just one of many mistakes Rexiel had made with his orders - to not follow them with anything and leave Lucifer free to choose for him - but it had been the most embarassing for him. So far. Lucifer had great plans for bigger and better attempts, were he freed from his bondage. The punishment - days on end spent impaled on spikes heated through with hellfire - had been more than worth it.

Politically the scandal had been devastating. Only two days later and the demons enraged by having given tribute to a slave - and an angel, no less - had attempted an uprising against Rexiel. The forces had been destroyed, but Rexiel had been tested. Before an audience of demons he had sentenced Lucifer to the cells of the ninth circle.

Lucifer had just raised an eyebrow, eyes still averted but looking to the side disinterestedly rather than down with any kind of respect, and yawned at the proclamation. ‘Thank you, Father,’ he had stated drily. ‘A holiday away from Rexiel is just what I desire.’

‘Keep talking and I’ll chain you to a pit, brother,’ Rexiel had growled. ‘Don’t think my love with spare you from that.’

‘Oh yes,’ Lucifer had replied insouciantly, ‘I’ve experienced your love for me. Wasn’t very satisfying, I have to say-’

‘Keep talking and I will have your tongue,’ Rexiel had snapped.

‘Blah blah blah,’ Lucifer had mocked in turn, flashing the court audience a brief grin. ‘ _You_ keep talking, _Master_ , you’ll send me to sleep.’

‘Lucifer, I swear I’ll-’

Demon Thrax had coughed, cutting off Rexiel’s words and apparently bringing him to the realisation that he was ranting at his slave in the middle of a full court. ‘Er…’ the demon ventured. ‘Sire?’

‘ _What_?’ Rexiel had raged, making Thrax cower. 

‘Nothing uh-’ Thrax had stuttered. ‘Should I have the king - uh, I mean the slave - taken to the ninth circle now?’

‘Oh for-’ Rexiel had stood, flustered, and waved a hand imperiously. ‘Yes. Take him. Just get him out of my sight. Make sure he suffers.’

And so Lucifer remains, locked in a cell designed specifically for him - the surrounding cells being those of the damned - and chained to the ground.

It’s a good memory, he has to admit, even if Rexiel had ‘visited’ only hours later to make sure he suffered to the full extent. The orders bind him more than the cell - no rest, no escape. The hours are interminably boring and filled with the screams of the tortured damned in cells nearby.

And it’s so damn cold. His wings are icy as they press against the wall of the cell.

The door springs open, and he eyes it suspiciously, but it’s only Armodor and Darkon, on orders for his daily torture.

‘Hello boys,’ he says lazily, stretching out as fully as he can in the small space. ‘Front or back?’

The demons heft their pitchforks, and without a further word, Armodor stabs through Lucifer’s body with the prongs. Two tines spear through his lungs, while the center tine stabs his sternum hard enough to pierce the solid bone. Lucifer lets out a brief yelp at the pain - the feeling of metal severing organs, muscle, bone - but manages to click his jaw shut quickly.

‘Your aim is getting much better, Armodor,’ he compliments, grunting with the effort of talking with two punctured lungs. It's been a long year and through repeated daily _visits_ the demons have almost come to regard him as a ‘friend’. As far as demons could be friends.

Armodor stares at him blankly and he yanks the pitchfork free from Lucifer’s body, using one booted foot to step on Lucifer’s ribs so that the pitchfork slides out, making Lucifer hiss with pain. 

‘H- How are the kids, Darkon?’ Lucifer addresses the other demon, chest rising and falling painfully as the holes knit closed. In lieu of reply, Darkon just stabs his pitchfork through Lucifer’s leg. So much for conversation.

Lucifer grunts and twists a little, unconsciously trying to get away from the discomfort in his leg even while he knows it will only make the pain worse.

‘Torturing their first souls yet? They grow up so fast,’ he gasps out through the pain, continuing the one-sided conversation and aiming for nonchalance. The agony lessens when the prongs withdraw from his limb, as the muscle and tendons heal immaculately.

‘No need to apologise for torturing your king,’ he offers benevolently. ‘You were made to torture. Mind you, you’re doing a rubbish job of it. Maze would have me flayed by now.’ Why Rexiel hadn’t sent demons with such orders is beyond Lucifer. He doubts it’s mercy - perhaps Rexiel is just waiting to get in on the fun, seasoned sadist that he is.

‘Go on,’ he huffs. ‘Go for the gut,’ he says primly. ‘It’s good to diversify.’

Darkon stabs him through the arm.

‘Even better,’ he groans, staring down at the impaled limb. ‘Don’t listen to me.’ Which is, of course, when Armodor stabs him through the gut.

The torture continues until Lucifer is racked with spasms, every part of his body still attempting to heal. Part way through, Darkon had sliced at Lucifer’s wings with a dagger, ripping them to shreds while Armodor continued to stab him. The pain is astounding.

He has a pitchfork through his chest and one in his leg, and is offering helpful commentary about severing tendons when Rexiel appears at the cell door. 

‘Oh,’ Lucifer says, making eye contact. ‘No, stop, it hurts,’ he moans, deadpan, batting his eyes sarcastically at Rexiel. ‘Oh the agony.’

His breath hitches a little with the difficulty of talking with what is essentially three daggers through his chest, but his speech is mostly unaffected. ‘If only I had listened to my fool of a master,’ he says drily. Darkon kicks him hard in his punctured ribs, and he has to cough for a few moments before his chest stops spasming. 

‘Oh, I obviously mean my honoured master and king,’ he corrects. ‘Wait, no-’ he waits as the pitchfork is removed from his chest. ‘He’s a moron. Why would I listen to him?’

Hell’s denizens are a tough crowd to please, so in his appreciation for Lucifer’s humour, Armodor kicks him in the face, catching his nose and cheek.

Rexiel is glowering at him when Lucifer’s vision clears. 

‘What _do_ you want?’ Lucifer asks drily when his voice returns. ‘I’m busy. Tight schedule, you know how it is.’

Armodor’s pitchfork slams through Lucifer’s throat, just above the collar, and he chokes as his throat spasms around the forks. He doesn’t _need_ to breathe, but his body definitely wants to. 

‘I would order you silent,’ Rexiel says with a dismissing sniff, ‘but that doesn’t appear to be necessary. Comfortable, brother?’

Lucifer offers him a gurgling noise, glaring at him. 

‘Or perhaps I’ll send you to Tartarus. Would you enjoy that? Wander endlessly amidst the sad broken souls of our fallen brethren? Those weak angels who create their own paradise and waste away in chains?’

‘Ah,’ Rex sighs when he doesn’t even attempt a reply. ‘Blessed silence. At last. Are you ready to return to my side? To be the eager dog at my feet?’

Lucifer just continues to glare, spitting blood up through his teeth.

‘That’s the spirit,’ Rexiel grins sadistically, and disappears back through the cell door.


	9. eight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I dithered about how to tag/warn this chapter.
> 
> There is a great deal of unwanted touching in this chapter. It's not _exactly_ sexual but it is a violation and there is absolutely no consent. Heads up  <3

eight. 

Around the eighth year, Lucifer starts despairing about Maze. 

Most of the time he is resolute, sure of her abilities and her loyalty. But there are moments when he loses that hope - such as now, after yet another report from a sympathetic demon that _no one_ has seen Mazikeen, not since Rexiel took the throne. 

He lies, spread out once more on the bed that has long ceased to be his for rest, turned into a torture device of its own.

Rexiel is divesting himself of his fine clothes in favour of soft trousers and nothing to cover his chest. Lucifer is similarly dressed, though he doubts that will last very long.

‘I miss my brothers,’ Rexiel says mildly. ‘Do you not? We are designed to live in the light of our brethren. We are given our tasks as pairs. I miss my other half. My sword brother. Do you not miss Michael?’

‘Not bloody likely,’ Lucifer snaps into the pillow. ‘Feeling nostalgic are you?’

‘You were always such a pair to behold. The warrior and the light bringer. It was a joy to watch you work, to form that beautiful flaming sword. You know, I always thought it was a sexual thing, was I right?’

‘Oh go abuse yourself,’ Lucifer curses at him, closing his eyes against the pain associated with thinking too hard about Michael. Hating Michael for casting him out is one thing, but the love they’d shared is-

‘Mm, maybe later,’ Rexiel hums. ‘Or perhaps I’ll let you do the honours.’

A hand presses against the shackle on Lucifer’s ankle. Finally, Rexiel actually approaches the bed instead of leering from behind. Lucifer kicks half-heartedly, knowing his ankle will come far short of contact but unwilling to lie passive under the touch.

‘Show me your wings.’

Against his will, the wings on Lucifer’s back materialise. ‘What do you want them for,’ Lucifer asks, reluctantly.

‘I miss our brothers,’ Rexiel repeats cryptically. ‘We need them to keep us neat.’

What he’s planning begins to dawn on Lucifer, and his wings flap with irritation. ‘I don’t even have feathers, you lout. I hardly need to be _groomed_.’

‘All the better,’ Rexiel’s voice is closer now, and Lucifer tilts his face toward the noise. The bed dips and Rexiel’s hand touches up at Lucifer’s right wing.

‘ _Don’t_ ,’ Lucifer warns. Rexiel ignores him, stroking a line down the wing. Lucifer’s wing flaps hard, and he feels his right come in contact with Rexiel. Good.

‘Stop,’ Rexiel orders, and Lucifer goes completely still. ‘Hold _still_ , brother. Unless you want to flinch. Please, feel free.’

‘You sadistic _creep_ ,’ Lucifer curses, as Rexiel returns one hand to touch at Lucifer’s wing. Then the other hand touches Lucifer’s left, and the tingling pleasure that shoots down his spine is nothing short of torture.

‘That’s true,’ Rexiel allows. ‘I’ll grant you that.’ He pauses. ‘Is it not pleasant?’

It _is_ , but Lucifer detests the feeling, induced as it is by his torturer brother. He thinks of the last time his wings had been groomed, oh so long ago, and it makes his chest tighten with anger. Rexiel’s touch traces the outer ridge of his wingbone, and Lucifer shivers. 

‘Good?’ Rexiel asks, and Lucifer swears into the pillow.

‘I _will_ destroy you,’ Lucifer promises, and Rexiel scrapes his fingernails down the flat of the wing.

It feels both delightful and painful as a feeling of electric sparks shoot through the wing. 

‘I remember when you cut my throat out,’ Rexiel muses. His hand reaches out to touch at the hooked talon at the very tip of Lucifer’s wing. ‘But you would not be my brother if you did not have so much rage and darkness within you.’

‘I can repeat the occasion for you if you wish.’ Lucifer’s voice is acerbic, sharp. He truly wishes he could cut Rexiel’s throat out again, stop the orders from ever leaving his lips.

Rexiel’s hand smooths down the wing again, over the slight ridges and down toward Lucifer’s spine where his wings are most sensitive.

‘You enjoyed our session in the pain fields that much?’ Rexiel asks. ‘I can take you there right now, if you wish.’

It might actually be preferable to the agony that comes in the form of pleasure at his brother’s hand, but he stays silent. 

‘How long has it been since someone groomed your wings, brother? Surely not since Michael, that bastard.’

Lucifer can remember the last time, as Michael methodically picked through his feathers and talked with him of their Father’s great plan. Even then, Lucifer had been questioning, but not aloud. Not yet. He doesn’t confirm or deny Rexiel’s assumption, but Rexiel gasps in faux surprise.

‘Honestly? Oh brother, I am pleased to be remedying that.’ 

Lucifer longs to twist away, but the compulsion keeps him still. He thinks of other things, tries to distract himself, but he keeps coming back to the Silver City. To his brethren, to the feeling of being loved in a way he had stupidly believed was unconditional.

He and Michael had always been pairs, the way Gabriel was with Uriel. A team, they’d worked together to bring the stars into existence, to set the galaxies into motion. Lucifer had been so proud of their efforts, of the creation they had helped their Father realise.

But then he’d questioned - first Michael, then Amenadiel. Both had admonished him for the questions, had not even understood why he was asking in the first place. He had walked the grassy paths outside the Silver City, for the first time without Michael by his side, and wondered whether _he_ was broken. Why would his Father, as perfect as he’d believed him to be, make him to question? Even that was a question too many, and it weighed upon him right up until he’d decided on a path.

He would ask his Father, and he would request the same freedom of movement the humans enjoyed. Seconds in Heaven saw them wander Creation blindly, unappreciative of its true beauty, or the power they held that angels could not.

He feels warm and deceptively safe under Rexiel’s hand, but his desire to flutter his wings under the ministrations reminds him just how powerless he is. That this is not the grooming he’d enjoyed with Michael, that this is a torture just as the ice and fire had been.

‘No,’ he manages weakly. His mind is foggy under the gentle stroking. ‘Rexiel, _stop_.’

But Rexiel continues. His will is nothing, after all. No free will, no freedom. All for naught.

He finally falls asleep under Rexiel’s hand. The last thing he hears is ‘that’s right, brother. We’re not so different, you and I.’

When he wakes, he finds himself back on the floor, where he has been banished to sleep ever since he attempted to cut Rexiel’s throat out all those years ago. His wings tuck around him and they feel somehow _cleaner_ than before.

Are they so different after all?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, we've two years left.
> 
> Thank you for the lovely comments you've been leaving.
> 
> If you're waiting for Between Faithfulness and Fearfulness, apologies for the delays - I'm writing a PhD at the moment, and Erya's about to start hers. Plus there's work etc etc so- we're trying! Most of the story has been written, a good 90%. We just want to fuss about with it before we post, that's what's keeping us. We haven't forgotten you!
> 
> ~ accrues


	10. nine.

nine. 

Lucifer walks the halls of Hell.

They’re quiet as his footsteps fall, ash raining from the pits of the circles far from this one. The first circle. Limbo. Here dwell the poor souls who had damned themselves long before their judgement had come. Too many, he thinks, who have damned themselves to Hell when they could have had Heaven. Perhaps after a moment or two in Purgatory. But who is he to decide these things? He was cast from Heaven himself for something he thinks hardly deserved such a punishment.

The collar around his neck weighs heavy as he passes door after door. Why is he here?

He had began wandering days ago, after Rexiel had left him unattended for a brief moment.

To be truthful, Rexiel has relaxed his hold in the last few years. Bored, Lucifer surmises- a playtoy that will not scream is no playtoy at all apparently, and now he wanders aimlessly through the hallways of Hell.

Lucifer has no doubt that Rexiel knows where he is, could swoop down at any moment. The ruler of Hell, or whoever holds his power, knows all of its movements, the machinations of its inhabitants, if he looks close enough. Lucifer hadn’t, uninterested in whatever coup was being planned. He should had paid better attention to Rexiel. To the other fallen angels, buried in their own misery.

He stops before a cell at random, and undoes the chains, heaves the door open.

Inside a girl of only fourteen or fifteen sits sobbing on a bed decked in white linens. Lucifer frowns, and lets the door shut behind him. As he steps closer, he notices the white of her dress, and the veil that covers her face. 

‘Please,’ she whispers. ‘I’m sorry.’

He looks down. His clothes have changed, from the old trousers he normally wears and the loose cotton tunic, to tight breeches and a fitted tunic that flatters his shoulders and chest. 

‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ he promises, taking a tentative step forward. ‘Are you alright?’

She looks up at him. ‘Forgive me,’ she intones, her whisper almost a groan. ‘I have sinned.’

‘We all have, I’m afraid,’ Lucifer says simply. ‘Don’t be scared.’

‘I lay with a man,’ she whimpers. ‘I’m _sorry_.’

‘Don’t be,’ he reaches her, and lays a hand on one slender arm. As she weeps he catches the edges of whispers through the infernal shadows of the room, hisses of blame, of retribution. The echoes of her own guilt, twisted inwards like jagged barbs.

‘Oh,’ he says, in sudden realisation, ‘you were raped,’ he realises, stealing her story from the whispers that echo around the room, condemning her. He remembers her now - it had been five years ago, the day Rexiel had forced Lucifer to admit his slavery before the court. The little girl who had lain with a man outside of marriage and been condemned to Limbo because of it. ‘You have nothing to be sorry for.’

‘I let him in my sacred place,’ she whispers. ‘ _Your_ sacred place.’

‘No,’ Lucifer says firmly, ‘not mine. And, personal philosophies aside, even if sleeping with another outside of marriage was a sin-’ her head snaps up, and even behind the veil he can see her eyes are wide and challenging. ‘-the victims of rape are certainly not sinners as a result.’

‘You’re not my husband,’ she says.

‘No,’ he agrees. ‘I’m not.’

‘You were there,’ she realises, voice hushed. ‘That day, in the-’ her face scrunches up in confusion. ‘Where am I?’

‘Oh,’ he says softly, and one of his fingers strokes at her arm. He doesn’t want to tell her. She doesn’t deserve this.

‘Where _am_ I?’ she asks insistently, and the words catch in his throat.

‘This is Hell,’ he says roughly, the truth ripped from his mouth.

‘Of course,’ she accepts softly, and then begins to weep once more. ‘Are you the Evil One?’ The words come out between choked sobs.

He swallows hard. How is it that he’s forced to wear that name when all power has been stripped from him? Is Rexiel not the Evil One, not Satan, or the Devil? How is that just?

But Lucifer has come to accept the reality that his existence will never see justice.

‘Yes,’ he admits roughly. It’s the true answer to the question she is asking. He only speaks the truth.

And then she begins the sob harder, rocking slightly with the motion.

He’s made things worse- why he ever thought _he_ , of all the beings in Creation could make anything better-

‘Lucifer, come.’

The door to the cell has opened, and Rexiel stands resplendent in the doorway, wings settled at his side. He appears celestial and holy. Lucifer knows the truth: he’s anything but that.

The command compels him, and he wrenches himself away from the girl, marching across the room to stand by Rexiel’s side. At his name, the girl had started crying even harder, a pain that slices through Lucifer deeper than any of Rexiel’s knives ever have.

The door shuts behind them as they exit the cell, and Rexiel regards him. ‘I anticipated you would attempt this.’

Lucifer frowns at him, confused. ‘Attempt what, exactly?’ he asks archly. It has been literal days since he last saw Rexiel, and now he’s accusing him of something?

‘Undermining my judgement,’ Rexiel replies, tone somewhat sullen. Lucifer just stares at him.

‘She was _raped_ ,’ Lucifer says aghast. ‘Even _Father_ wouldn’t condemn her for that.’

‘Who are you to speak on behalf of _God_?’ Rexiel looks somewhat amused. ‘After all this time, you still think you have any notional idea of what _He_ thinks?’

Lucifer clenches his teeth together in anger. Rexiel is correct- Lucifer has long since given up on the idea that he can predict his Father. Not long ago he would have thought Hell’s throne was as far as he could fall. Now he knows better.

‘I could order you to return to her side,’ Rexiel continues lightly, ignoring Lucifer’s silence. ‘I could make you torment her, beyond the pain she is already dealing herself. You could _hurt_ her, brother. She is damned, and you are her torturer.’

‘No,’ Lucifer snaps. ‘No.’

‘Oh?’ Rexiel looks amused. ‘And what will you give me in exchange for my mercy?’

Lucifer just glares at him. ‘What do you want?’ he growls. ‘You already have me- _bound_ to your will,’ he spits.

‘Ah yes,’ Rexiel purrs. ‘But wouldn’t it be… _sweeter_ , if I didn’t need to use the collar?’

Dread starts to stir in Lucifer’s gut. ‘What do you _want_?’ he repeats, tone dark.

‘Your submission,’ Rexiel says simply.

Lucifer just laughs harshly. ‘No.’

Rexiel shrugs one shoulder, wings flapping slightly. ‘Very well. Open the door.’

Lucifer’s teeth clench together, but Rexiel’s hand goes to the knob of the door, twisting it to open even as he yells ‘ _NO_.’

Inside the girl still sobbing on the bed she had intended for her husband looks up in alarm, and Lucifer’s stomach sinks.

‘Help me,’ she whispers, and her eyes are on _Rexiel_ , as if she hadn’t been present when the bastard had sentenced her. As if _Lucifer_ had caused her all this agony.

‘Go, brother,’ Rexiel says simply. ‘Show her what Hell is _really_ like.’

‘No,’ Lucifer says desperately, even as he steps into the cell.

‘Well then,’ Rexiel rebuts. ‘Stop.’

Lucifer falls to his knees, hunching over in a prostration he is almost grateful for. ‘Fine,’ he grits out between his teeth.

‘What was that?’ Rexiel asks, stepping into the room and standing over him. His booted feet stand directly before the crown of Lucifer’s head and Lucifer closes his eyes against the words that come from his mouth.

‘Fine, you win,’ he growls.

‘And what are you?’ Rexiel asks. Lucifer knows what Rexiel wants in response to this, knows he doesn’t have to give it, not technically, not with the collar.

‘Your slave,’ he grinds out between his teeth.

‘Good.’ Rexiel’s tone is gleeful. ‘And you will obey me?’

Lucifer has to take a deep breath against the urge to snap a dark retort, hissing the word ‘yes’ out on his exhale.

‘Wonderful. Rise then, if you wish.’

He’s still smirking when Lucifer rises, his jaw ticking with the realisation that none of his actions were compelled by the collar. The door closes behind them after they step from the cell, and Lucifer imagines he can still hear the sobbing of that girl, trapped in self recrimination.

‘I want you to call me Master,’ Rexiel says once they’re alone, and everything within Lucifer makes him balk, the word _no_ on the tip of his tongue. ‘And to know it brother, deep inside the broken fragments you call a soul.’

Lucifer’s jaw is aching from the pressure he’s putting it to, the grinding of his teeth against each other. _I could make you love me_ , echoes in his mind and he rebels against it desperately. 

‘But I’ll settle for your servitude, for you to bend your proud neck to me without any need for this-’ his hand reaches out ‘... accessory.’

Lucifer flinches away from the touch at his collar, and Rexiel smirks. ‘So what will it be, brother? Say my name.’

This time it is a compulsion, but many words could fall in that space. Brother, Rexiel, son-of-a-bastard. But only one falls from Lucifer’s lips. 

‘Master.’

-

‘I think you should remove your shirt,’ Rexiel says, offhandedly. Three days into this ridiculous farce, Lucifer feigning obedience while desperately scanning for another way out, and Lucifer has had _enough_.

‘You know I don’t love you in that way,’ Lucifer deadpans, removing his tunic nonetheless.

‘Careful, brother,’ Rexiel tuts, taking a seat primly in the chaise lounge set against the chamber wall, ‘you should be grateful I don’t have you walking around trouserless at all times, ready for my use.’

Lucifer tenses, fists balling and shoulders tightening, but he feigns a yawn. ‘Oh yes, I’m so grateful I could weep,’ he agrees tonelessly.

‘Good,’ Rexiel smiles, and kicks one leg up over the other. ‘Ruling is such tiring work,’ he sighs. ‘I don’t know how you did it all these years all alone.’

‘Somehow I managed.’

‘How about you come here, brother,’ Rexiel croons. ‘You could kneel before me, ease my tension. Wash my feet.’

Lucifer glares at him, waiting for the collar to push him into serving- the years have made it almost second nature. But the impulse never comes.

‘Or we could visit the first circle,’ Rexiel threatens lightly.

Remembrance sweeps over him and Lucifer steps forward, jaw tight. ‘Please,’ Rexiel says with deliberate politeness. ‘Fetch me some water.’

Lucifer turns on his heel, walking to the table to pour a glass with irritation from the decanter.

‘No,’ Rexiel corrects. ‘A bowl, Lucifer. And a cloth.’

The fruit bowl on the table empties easily when Lucifer dumps the grapes out onto the surface. The glass of water only fills the very bottom, and he throws the table covering in with the liquid. Much to Lucifer’s chagrin, Rexiel does not seem to be at all disturbed by Lucifer’s misuse of the furnishings.

‘Now kneel. If you please.’

Lucifer detests Rexiel’s newest attempts at his enslavement. Lucifer’s forced obedience is apparently no longer enough, now he must bow and scrape without forced inducement. He kneels, feeling hatred with every movement. 

‘You look so beautiful on your knees,’ Rexiel purrs. His hand goes to gently trace down Lucifer’s cheek and smirks as Lucifer turns away. ‘But so stern! Why don't you give me a smile, brother?’

Lucifer grits his teeth. This is not worth it, he thinks. Surely an outright order is kinder than bloody _bending_ , than humiliating himself every day in exciting new ways. Then he catches Rexiel’s knowing smile, the glint in his eyes. He's clearly _waiting_ for Lucifer to refuse him so he can punish him. 

Punishment he can abide. He can live with the whipping, the burning, even the endless awful _sex_ \- but torturing? Not even the guilty and deserving, but the innocent? No. He's not a monster, no matter what Rexiel has to say on the subject.

His lips twitch into a stretched smile, more a grimace than an expression of joy. ‘There’, he bites out through his teeth, holding the smile. 

Rexiel huffs. ‘I suppose it's a start,’ he muses before regarding his bare toes. He grins and lazily prods at Lucifer playfully with one foot, drawing it down Lucifer’s cheek as he stiffens. 

‘I could ask you to clean them with your mouth,’ he murmurs suggestively, ‘Suck each of my toes with that clever mouth of yours and lick me clean, but-’ he sighs regretfully, ‘I've decided to be merciful and settle for that bowl. Don't you think me kind?’

‘You’re a sadist,’ Lucifer disagrees bluntly.

‘True,’ Rexiel smiles. ‘Would you wash my feet, slave?’

‘No.’ But he picks up the cloth anyway, and applies it to his brother’s feet, gritting his teeth as Rexiel groans in pleasure. He focuses on the task, attempting to ignore the fact that he’s doing it under strict orders. Threats, really. ‘I will rip you open and feed you to my dog,’ he promises, running the cloth down Rexiel’s toes.

‘Won’t that be wonderful,’ Rexiel flexes his toes. ‘But for now you attend to me.’

‘For now,’ Lucifer agrees, swiping the cloth up the arch of Rexiel’s foot. ‘You like pain, brother, but I wonder how much you will like it when you are on the receiving end.’

‘Enough,’ Rexiel yawns, kicking at the bowl and sending its contents spilling over Lucifer’s legs. ‘I have a better idea in mind for you, since you seem to be struggling with your due status.’

Lucifer grits his teeth but stands, freed from the previous order. ‘What now? Some other mind-numbingly boring menial task?’

Rexiel is sitting up now, swinging his legs over and pulling his shoulders back imperiously. ‘Fetch a demon blade, would you? The guard outside will assist you.’

Now he wants Lucifer _armed_? The idea has merit, Lucifer has to admit, even if he does have to get in quickly before Rexiel triggers the collar and ends any attempt at mutiny. The guard outside questions him when he asks for his weapon, but the dispute is resolved when Rexiel waves a hand airily and Lucifer snatches the blade.

He strides purposefully forward, but Rexiel is grinning, dangerous and predatory. ‘Now brother, would Lucile appreciate this stupidity?’

Lucifer clenches his teeth, but races forward - he is an arch angel, fallen or no, and a better match against Rexiel than anyone in hell could hope to be. ‘Her name is Margaret.’

‘Stop,’ Rexiel says carelessly, and Lucifer immediately drops to his knees. It’s been three whole days since he last felt an order hijack his nervous system and push him to the floor. The blade in his hand cuts against his palm as he falls into a prostration, panting with rage and exertion. ‘They all look the same. But what a shame for poor Margaret,’ he croons. ‘Perhaps I’ll have you drag her to the third circle yourself. I wonder how much she will enjoy fire.’

‘Don’t,’ Lucifer exhales darkly. ‘You can’t- she’s been sentenced.’

‘Hmm.’ He steps toward Lucifer, stopping immediately before him. ‘Sit up. You will not use that blade against me in any way. Not that you _could_ ,’ he finishes. ‘Now. For Margaret’s sake. Follow my words carefully brother, and I will not touch her.’

Lucifer settles back on his knees, looking up at Rexiel warily. 

‘All I want from you,’ Rexiel says sweetly. ‘Is for you to bear my mark, if only for the short time before you heal. And then, perhaps I will have you bear it again.’

A sick feeling settles in Lucifer’s stomach. He glares at Rexiel sullenly, grip tightening around the knife, the blade cutting deeper into his palm. ‘Cut it yourself,’ Rexiel instructs. ‘Please brother, I want to see you flinch. You remember your Enochian, I hope. ‘Don’.’

‘No.’ Lucifer argues, and Rexiel raises his fair eyebrows.

‘Not even for sweet little Margaret?’ The words make Lucifer’s gut roil, but this is beyond the pale, beyond _sanity_ , engraving his brother’s initial into his skin with the language used in the Silver City. But he remembers the sobs of that girl, punished for simply falling to her knees before a sadist.

‘Where?’ he asks gruffly, and Rexiel’s eyes light up with pleasure.

‘On your arm,’ Rexiel dictates, reaching down to take Lucifer’s left arm, stretching it out. ‘Let me _help_ , brother.’

The first cuts sting, and those that follow _burn_. The thick swirl at the base of the symbol Lucifer leaves as a stencil, until the grip around his wrist tightens. ‘Finish it, brother,’ Rexiel orders - this one making the collar force his hand. The blood rushes over his skin, obscuring the symbol as he tears at the meat of his forearm.

‘Perfect,’ Rexiel breathes, once the collar allows Lucifer to stop cutting. He can no longer see the symbol, his skin is so red with blood. Rexiel stoops down for one moment, collecting the cloth he had discarded earlier, and swiping it over the skin of Lucifer’s arm. ‘Well, brother. It seems you can obey orders, after all. And to think, it only took nine years!’

‘Margaret. You won’t hurt her.’ Lucifer ignores the jibe.

‘Perhaps,’ Rexiel agrees absently. ‘For now. But I have other things to attend to.’

With one final look down at the mark on Lucifer’s arm, slowly healing under the cuts the demon blade made, he loosens his hold. ‘Try not to get bored without me.’ He pats once at Lucifer’s face, splattering blood on the skin, and straightens. ‘Stay now.’ The door clicks closed as he exits the room, and Lucifer sighs, looking down at the mark as the blood sluggishly stems. _Where_ is Mazikeen?

-

‘Blooods,’ the sprite says as it hops across the room and up onto the chaise Lucifer has co-opted as his own for the moment. He will deal with the consequences once Rexiel returns, but for now he reclines in the weak light from the window.

‘No,’ he sighs, pulling his arm toward him protectively. ‘You’ll only get sick.’

The sprite looks offended. ‘No sick. Scawy.’

‘Yes yes,’ he agrees. ‘You can be very scary. But angel blood is still _bad_ for you, fallen or no.’

‘Bloooods,’ the sprite echoes, looking excited. It inches forward, and Lucifer eyes it, unimpressed.

‘How would you like to make a deal?’ Lucifer asks ponderously, thinking of the ways the little creatures navigate hell without being noticed, how they talk, despite their limited vocabulary.

‘Deeeeeeeal,’ the sprite mimics. ‘Bloods?’

Lucifer frowns. ‘Well, yes of course,’ he agrees, reaching his clean arm to prod at the small being. ‘But what do you _desire_? Pleasure? Pain? Power?’

The little ball of shadow hesitates for one moment under his power, and then buzzes. ‘Paaaats. Bloooods.’

He stares at the creature dumbfounded, running one finger along its soft fur. ‘That is all you desire?’

‘Paaaats,’ the sprite purrs. ‘Lusisfer paaaaats.’ It inches forward, and Lucifer catches it before it makes its way to his injury.

‘No angel blood,’ he reprimands. ‘But very well, you have a deal. Now… listen.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Enochian letter R (don) is really [freaking pretty](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/Enochian_alphabet.png/550px-Enochian_alphabet.png).
> 
> Somewhat ot but accrues only just came across the [it's funnier in enochian in gallifreyan](http://fyeahgallifreyan.tumblr.com/post/131387572005/its-funnier-in-enochian-in-shermans) post today, which is shocking given our fandom history. So damn funny.


	11. ten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. Late night, and then AO3 was down for scheduled maintenance. The chapter we've all been waiting for.
> 
> Here we go!

ten.

The sprites hurry along the corridor, bouncing over each other in their haste to match Lucifer’s long strides.

‘Luiciferrrrrrs,’ one purrs. ‘Sticks.’

‘ _Styx_ ,’ he corrects. ‘Tell Ardel.’

‘Yesssss,’ they agree. ‘Arrrrrrrrrdel.’

‘Go!’ He shakes his head, watching as they make their uncouth way down the pathway surrounding the first circle. They’ve been following him for months, every time he makes this journey.

It feels like centuries since he first saw them, rather than four years. Ten years since Rexiel first stormed the throne room. A whole fourteen months since Lucifer agreed to serve without compulsion through the collar. A year of bending his neck to any order Rexiel gave, no matter how humiliating.

Except for this one indiscretion.

As the sprites hurry away, Lucifer stops outside a cell and carefully unlocks the chains. Ash falls from where it has settled on the lock and collects on his fingers, making them feel chalky. The air smells like the afterburn of a forest fire today, variety given the usual charred flesh and burning hair.

The door opens easily as he pushes inside, as if swinging on well oiled hinges. Immediately, heat hits him full force, as if an inferno lies before his feet. The smell intensifies - _wood_ is burning, not souls. It’s somewhat telling that Lucifer finds that novel.

He stops to survey the interior. He appears to be in a small village, perhaps somewhere in Europe. Although the night casts the scene in darkness, he can see fields stretching out, can hear the faint clucking of roosting chickens off in the distance. 

A house is on fire. Or rather, it is slowly banking, the dying licks of flame flickering past a glassless window. The worst is over - the cottage is all but completely destroyed.

A man is sobbing - as they all seem to be, especially in this circle - his sooty hands pressed over his eyes as he sits bent double on the dirt a few paces away from what is presumably _his_ cottage.

‘I should have been there, I should have been there,’ the man moans, twitching with sobs. ‘Mary-Anne.’

Lucifer steps toward him, scanning the surroundings for any hallucinatory figures invented to torture the man. He’s cautious, steps tentative - the way one might approach a frightened animal.

 _Glutton_ , the echoes whisper, denouncing the man. _Heathen_.

Lucifer frowns. Gluttony may be a deadly sin, but the man is wearing workwear, and he doesn’t appear overly heavy in weight. Not that necessarily indicates overindulgence. A small amount of hedonism is par for the course with humans - just look at Eve! And apparently the man is heathen, but that in itself doesn’t damn a soul, not unless they feel somehow _bad_ about being an atheist.

‘What did you do?’ he asks as softly as he can manage - months of attempting to soothe the damned has taught him some new tricks - but the man just continues to cry.

‘I should have been there.’

Images come to Lucifer’s mind and he can see it now, the way the man had stumbled from the tavern full of ale, walked the miles between the ale house and his own only to find the small cottage on fire and his wife and daughter trapped inside.

Witless, he’d been unable to do anything in a hurry, had prepared to storm the cottage when the entire building went up in a furnace.

‘My baby, my Mary-Anne,’ the man sobs, and Lucifer sees the final sin. Suicide. Oh dear, Lucifer thinks. Dad never was a fan of his little projects purposefully drinking from that poisoned chalice. But this still seems all a bit... extreme.

‘Peace,’ Lucifer tries, reaching a hand to touch at the man’s shoulder. ‘Come now, surely it can’t be as bad as all that.’ He purses his lips as the man hiccoughs. ‘Except well, I suppose you are in Hell. I have to agree that’s not brilliant, but between you and me Heaven is dreadfully boring.’

For the first time in the last year, Lucifer starts to feel like he’s actually getting _good_ at this, because the man looks up, his sobs quieting.

‘Who are you?’ the man whispers.

‘Yes well,’ Lucifer pauses awkwardly. ‘You’re not going to like this, I’m afraid. My name is Lucifer.’

‘The Devil? No. There’s no such thing.’

‘Well!’ Lucifer exclaims. ‘That’s the spirit. Now. I’m sorry your little house burnt down, along with your wife and child but- ah.’ He stops. ‘Yes, I suppose I do see your point. Weeping may be the appropriate response.’ He pats at the man’s back stiffly.

The man looks like he’s about to reply, when all of a sudden Hell starts shaking. Lucifer stares at him.

‘Oh _good_!’ Lucifer exclaims. ‘Sorry, got to run. I will be back, I promise. And my word is my bond.’

The door slams shut behind him as he bolts from the cell and into the hallway. He immediately turns right moving in a rapid blur, and the exit out of the first circle appears before him. 

_Pandemonium_ , he thinks firmly, and steps out to the palace staircase. They’re _empty_ , which is odd, all the palace guards have left. There’s no sound but that of his footsteps. When he pauses, focusing, he can only just hear the sound of shouting, of steel clashing against steel.

He grins, ferally, a bounce starting to set into his step as he bounds onward up the stairs and along the corridors of his former palace. _Finally_.

The throne room is a ruckus when he eventually reaches it, and he is forced to dodge many a melee in his attempts to weave into the throng, just in time to come face to face with his demon.

‘Mazikeen,’ he breathes in relief, ‘thank _Dad_.’

‘No,’ she snaps. ‘Thank _me_.’ The teeth not already on display flash as she grins at him, blocking a sword blow blindly as it aims for her back. She has blood splashed along her right cheek, bright against the pale skin, and her demonic left side shows tight tendons holding her smile. She’s never looked more beautiful.

‘Yes,’ he murmurs, reaching out to touch briefly at her shoulder. ‘Thank _you_.’

Behind her the sprites are also in the throng, bouncing up and down and attacking without mercy, morphing between shadow states to pose the greatest threat. Some of Rexiel’s demons are already backing away, heading for the door. Well, demons are nothing but duplicitous - Lucifer has known that from the start. Rexiel should have known better.

It’s eerily reminiscent of that moment ten years prior, where Lucifer had stood on the dias watching as demons clashed, Rexiel at the fore. Here, now, Rexiel stands in Lucifer’s place staring out in horror at the display before him. Lucifer stares, standing still and calm in the middle of the skirmish, trusting Maze completely to defend him from all sides.

It takes a moment for Rexiel to meet his eyes.

‘Lucifer!’ Rexiel screams once their gazes meet, and Lucifer bolts immediately for the throne. The chain remains where it always had, tethered to the ring beneath the throne, and he seizes it with a certain unconscious reluctance, using all of his will to haul it to him, to snap it onto the vile collar and grin ferociously as it closes to hold him fast. 

‘Defend me!’ Rexiel snarls, rushing to him face obviously uncomprehending at the sight of Lucifer tethered willingly to the ground. 

The compulsion to obey is so strong that Lucifer almost regrets running into the fray and not waiting in the outer circles until Maze took Hell properly. But he’s glad he came. He wouldn’t miss this for anything.

His throat chokes against the collar as he attempts to lunge forward at the revolting demons, to run to Rexiel’s side, when a thought strikes him. ‘You’re not a terrible ruler,’ he yells sarcastically, and delights in how the compulsion lessens. Well, he _is_ ‘defending’ Rexiel after all, even if the weapon he uses is words. Words that had been Rexiel’s weapon for ten years. ‘You’re not a monster.’

‘What are you _doing_?’ Maze screams over the sounds of battle, but he’s enjoying himself too much.

‘You’re not a bastard angel, don’t listen to them,’ he hollers cheerfully. Rexiel is in the fray himself now, having given up on Lucifer at least for the moment, in order to defend himself against the immediate threats.

‘ _Kneel_ ,’ Lucifer screams at him. ‘Kneel and I will give the _order_.’

Rexiel’s wings are out, flashing in the fray to slash out at his attackers.

‘You are _my_ slave,’ Rexiel rages, not even turning around to scream the words directly at Lucifer. ‘And you _will_ be punished if you do not call them off.’

‘Kneel and I will consider mercy,’ Lucifer calls with feral spite, grinning as a response.

‘ _No_ -’ Rexiel falls silent, his rebuttal cut off as a sword pierces his chest. As he falls, the rest of the throne room also falls silent as demons and sprites freeze. The king is falling, what’s the use in continuing this fight? Maze stands over him, blood smeared along her arms, sword skewering through Rexiel’s heart. ‘I will destroy you,’ Rexiel says weakly up at Maze, and she steps against his chest and _twists_.

Rexiel screams, blond head falling back. His form shifts to its damned shape, black cowl, skeletal fingers. He’s weakened- Lucifer had almost forgotten how much weaker the mere dominions were against his own strength. A single blade to the heart would never have stopped Lucifer.

‘Seize him,’ Maze orders, and without a single backward glance she hauls her sword from Rexiel’s chest and marches directly toward Lucifer.

One blow cuts the chain and she spins in a perfect circle immediately around to slice at Lucifer’s neck.

For one desperate moment he believes she is about to decapitate him, and his heart clenches. He would return, fully formed, he knows, but the fear washes over him nonetheless.

The sword stops just shy of his skin, cutting through the collar as if it were nothing but butter.

‘How?’ he whispers, as the metal falls from his neck.

‘Does it matter?’ she asks archly. ‘I’m just that _awesome_.’

‘That you are,’ he grumbles, brushing ash from his doublet. The forces of hell are rushing through him, making his mind spin with power. It’s dizzying, overwhelming. 

He sees nothing but white for a brief moment, and his wings spring free, his form switching between his angelic visage and the burned form of his fallen self. Then his vision clears and he sees the scene before him has changed. All the demons bar those guarding Rexiel are on the ground, Maze at very the front of the line on one bended knee.

Rexiel is bound, much the same way Lucifer had been ten years ago. He’s struggling, spitting curses and flashing between his two forms.

‘You know, brother,’ Lucifer says genially, taking a predatory step forward. ‘I believe I made you several promises in the last ten years I have yet to deliver on.’

Rexiel’s top lip curls back in a sneer even as he thrashes against the arms pinning him down.

‘No witty reply?’ Lucifer asks pleasantly. ‘Fine.’ He reaches down to where the collar lies, severed along one side. He picks it up, weighing it in one hand. ‘So what do you think, Maze? Eye for an eye? Would be a shame to let this collar go to waste.’

‘No!’ Rexiel shouts. ‘No!’

‘Yes, you’re right,’ Lucifer muses. ‘I’d much rather see it melted down to slag, and I hardly need tawdry magicks to encourage obedience.’

He clicks his fingers, still eyeing the collar. ‘Take my _brother_ Rexiel to the bone fields and tether him there. I will be along presently. Maze? Let’s find a good hot lake to throw this hateful object in.’

And with that, he turns and walks away from the throne, the eyes of demons on his back.

-

‘They should write a book about this,’ Lucifer muses as he watches the collar sink into the hot lake of lava, ignoring the many screams of agony surrounding them as soul after soul is plunged in alongside it. Maze, bored with his ceremony, is assisting to hasten their fates. ‘Maybe something more tasteful than a collar.’ He fiddles with the signet ring around his finger. ‘Perhaps a ring. Yes, something that corrupts and controls. A grand quest to destroy it in fire.’

He ponders this for a moment and then shrugs. ‘Perhaps not. Far too much melodrama.’

Maze just ignores him, and kicks another screaming soul into the flames.

-

‘Hello, brother,’ Lucifer smiles down at Rexiel. His brother is tethered to the field beside a stretch of other souls sentenced to decay into nothing but bone for the rest of existence. The souls on either side of Rexiel are both half-ruined, eyes roving desperately without any lids to protect them. ‘Comfortable?’

Rexiel’s is pinned down in a star, each ankle tethered heavily by chains to tie him to the field.

‘The bone fields?’ Rexiel scoffs. ‘You can do better than this,’ he challenges.

‘You’re right of course,’ Lucifer agrees. ‘Which is why I thought I’d add a little extra _something_.’ He clicks his fingers. ‘Cerberus!’

Cerberus bounds across the field, appearing out of shadow and smoke, and forming into the monstrous dog she is.

‘Feast, there’s a good dog,’ Lucifer purrs. ‘Focus on the intestines. I’m sure that will keep you occupied for ooh,’ he considers it. ‘At least another century. What do you think?’

Rexiel’s face is paling, his eyes wide. ‘No, Lucifer, brother, don’t do this.’

‘Feast,’ Lucifer says lovingly, and turns away just as Cerberus pounces, opening the jaws of all three of heads to rip and snarl and tear.

‘Now.’ Lucifer ponders. ‘There’s something I’ve forgotten.’

-

‘There you go,’ Lucifer says cheerfully, opening the door to Purgatory. The rushing winds blow by him, sucking and howling in the far distance of the immediate terrain. ‘Purgatory. No more reliving the death of your child and wife. Couple centuries and who knows, maybe you’ll even find them in Heaven. But don’t blame me if you end up there - I did warn you.’

‘You’re an angel,’ Samuel gasps, eyes full of tears. He takes a tentative step forward through the door, and instantly disappears in the grey.

‘No,’ Lucifer disputes, eyes flashing red. He grins. ‘I’m the devil. And I think it’s time for a change.’

The door slams shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it, y'all. I hope you enjoyed. Without giving anything away, there are parts of this that will be echoed in BFF (effects of slavery for one, which we're already seeing), so don't think it's all over. Erya and I will be working together to try and get those chapters up! - accrues
> 
> Thanks for following us down this weird and twisted garden path.
> 
> PLEASE, if you wanna keep in touch, accrues is very active on twitter (@accrues - just add and provided you're not an empty account she'll add back), and we're both in and out on tumblr (accrues = gated, Erya = eryaforsthye). We'd LOVE to hear from you.

**Author's Note:**

> I will be updating the tags as I go along for certain types of torture etc., so keep an eye on them. The main one I'm concerned about is allusions to offscreen rape which start in Chapter 3.
> 
> Leave some love!


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